About Me

When not nosing, tasting, drinking and reading about malt whisky, I own one of Israel's premiere boutique coaching practices, specializing in small businesses and executive teams.
Trained in the law, I was an international law attorney and took part in Israel's peace negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as representing my country at the UN for parts of the negotiations on the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Later I was appointed to the military bench.
My favorite thing, other than whisky, is teaching.
You can contact me through the social media buttons above or by email: michael(at)maltandoak.com, replacing the (at) with an @.

Statement of Integrity and Guidelines

Malt and Oak is an independent whisky blog, offering my own views, opinions and news from the world of malt whisky.
These are my guidelines:

1. All whisky reviews published are of whiskies I have personally tasted and noted. Guest bloggers only write about their own personal tastings.

2. With the exception of official whisky samples, I accept no consideration whatsoever from any distillery, bottler, distributor, drink company or store for my opinions.

3. I maintain strict impartiality and objectivity in tasting all whiskies, not least when tasting official samples. Any review of official whisky samples sent to me will be so noted in the post.

4. I will accept invitations to tastings, events and official visits, and full disclosure will be made on any tasting notes and articles resulting from these events or visits.

5. Any sample received over 30 ml in volume is shared with fellow whisky bloggers. In any event, no sample larger than 100 ml will be accepted.

6. No advertisements promoting specific brands will be accepted.

7. I will answer any inquiry by my readers as quickly and as fully as possible.

8. Should I give a link purchase the reviewed whisky, it will be given free of any commercial interest. The link given will always point to cheapest selling price I found on the web. No commission is paid, nor any other consideration given, for such link.

9. As of July 2017, I serve as Douglas Laing’s Israel brand ambassasdor. As such, I will obviously not be posting reviews of Douglas Laing products.

Glenisla 1977 – Rarest of the Rare, Weirdest of the Weird

But you’ve never heard of Glenisla, and when you checked the closed distilleries section in your ‘Malt Whisky Yearbook’ you found nothing. So what is this and how did it get to a bottle?

The story is this: Glen Keith is one of Chivas Brother’s most important distilleries, and while not officially bottled, is quite well known. With interesting (and mostly excellent) bottlings out by independent bottlers, Signatory definitely leading the way with bottling that distillery. Here and there, you’ll even come across a peated version of Glen Keith – which brings us to Glenisla.

Photo Credit: mapio.net

Chivas Bros., both under Seagram’s and under Pernod Ricard, are looking to innovate and Glen Keith, located right behind Strathisla, is the group’s secret laboratory, if I’m to use Malt Maniac Martine Nouet’s term for it, although it was mothballed between 1999 and 2013. Glenisla malt is one of those experiments, and a strange one it is. It appears that Chivas was experimenting with changing the water used for distillation, infusing the water with peat (from the Isle of Lewis, no less) and running it through the stills to concentrate the smokiness. Then, lightly peated malt was mashed with the heavily peated water, fermented and distilled.

The result is downright weird, and tastes very artificial.

The whisky produced in these 1977 experiments is extremely rare, with only seven casks bottled. This cask was bottled in 2011, and if you really want to, another was bottled in 2015 at 37 years old, and is still available.

Nose: First hit of a compost heap or an artificial pineapple drink concentrate. It turns to apricot popsicles with green leaves and a hit of lemon. A sour note persists. After some time some smoke appears, though faintly over the fruit.

Palate: Palate has that apricot flavor, hint of honeydew melons. Hint of smokiness on the palate, but this is by no means a heavily peated whisky.

Linger: Sweet with a note of sour fruitiness. The sweetness persists for a bit leaving a parched dryness.

Conclusion

Weird dram, truly… The artificial flavor of apricot is the predominant (and almost only) feature, and I really can’t recommend this for anything other than the novelty. No wonder the experiment was scrapped.

I do wonder what would have happened had they experimented with wood finishes 😉